Special education provision in Greek mainstream classrooms: teachers’ characteristics and recruitment procedures in parallel support

How Can Social Capital Become a Facilitator of Inclusion?

“…Teachers' responsibility for the academic success of students with special educational needs is as unquestionable as in the case of their peers who do not need special education services, but attitudes and methodological diversity are even more important according to the findings of a 20-year-old research study [75]. At the same time, as in many other countries [1,20], teachers in Hungary are not adequately supported. On the one hand, it would be necessary for teacher education to have an adequate focus on preparation for integration and inclusion.…”

“…After all, their children need more intensive care and attention, which makes everyday life more difficult. Because of this, they also have more difficulties in education and expect more and more effective support from teachers and other professional support staff [19,20,[77][78][79].…”

“…(1) The first thematic focus considers schools as a starting point. Although there is a sceptical view of inclusion [15,16], the majority of the literature believes that an inclusive pedagogical environment can help students with special educational needs to be successful [2,3,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. However, this is only true if there are truly appropriate conditions provided at the school level [2,15,19,22,28].…”

“…We can find papers on the role of school leadership [30], implementers of different inclusive programmes as well as other professionals and teachers. These studies examine, first, how educators working with children with special educational needs can be resilient despite professional challenges and psychological trials; second, how their teachers or other professionals can enhance the resilience of students with special educational needs [2,20,29,[31][32][33].…”

“…What carries on in the family and how professionals can support families in the upbringing of their children is discussed in less detail, even in sources that regard parents as partners. Furthermore, in many countries, there is no evidence of widespread, well-established practices in this area [2,15,20,22,28,[34][35][36][37][38].…”